I’ve been following this story for a few weeks, ever since it was used by John Derbyshire as an example of the molassas-covered wheels of American justice in action. Any cursory background check into the details of the case reveals a guilt on the part of the defendants that is so blindingly obvious even an OJ juror would feel ashamed to pronounce any verdict but “guilty as a motherfucker.”

And nearly as obvious is the sheer depravity of the execution style multiple murders involved in the petty robbery, the fact of which enrages further: that these murders were committed senselessly for the sake of a few hundred dollars in a Wendy’s cash register. There was no reason these people had to be methodically tied up and then shot. One would almost hope for some kind of rationale that would lend some reason to the truly senseless madness of the scene, some way that one could say the five murders were an integral part of the commission of the crime . But they weren’t. There wasn’t any real concrete reason for the killings save for the apparent pleasure those animals who pulled the triggers recieved from snuffing out human life.

Well now one of those animals has been sentenced by a jury of his former-peers to be put down by lethal injection. In some ways a pity that the death sentence will be carried out in such a humane manner.

“This day has finally come, and he got the justice he deserved,” said Joan Truman-Smith, whose daughter Anita was killed .Jude Saintville, whose brother Jean Auguste was the first person murdered, said Taylor “got what he deserved.”

Well… yes and no . Legally, he got what he deserved: the full weight and penalty that the law allows applied to him. In moral terms, he practically got off scot-free.

True moral justice would involve, at the very least, John Taylor being tied up and made helpless while he contemplated the death that was coming to him. It would involve him being kicked and beaten and verbally abused as he lay prone on the cold dirty floor, continually threatened by the specter of swift death by a madman holding a gun. And finally, it would entail him watching in abject terror as the executioner placed that gun to his head and pulled the trigger .

Really, however, even this would not be complete moral justice, because a subhuman such as John Taylor could never truly experience the anguish felt by those who knew they were going to die and were already thinking about the hardships of their friends and family left behind. Being a piece of human offal, this type of pain would be an unknown to John Taylor.

So maybe we can’t twitch at any empathy nerves that aren’t there, and thus make Taylor really feel waht his victims did. But at the very least we can tweak and pinch and prod at his base sense of self-preservation, his animal fear of death, and wring all the suffering possible from those urges before his worthless life is snuffed out. It may not be enough, but it’s something…

last update : 22-2-2018

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on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 2:03 pm and is filed under general.
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